Sahitya Akademi is the highest literature body in the country and awards writers for their work. The Sahitya Akademi Award, which is considered one of the highest prizes in the field of literature in India, was awarded to 24 writers on Wednesday. The Akademi is also known as India’s National Academy of Letters.
This award is given to the writers showcasing the most outstanding literary work in the form of books published in any of the 22 official languages of the country. During the facilitation event, as many as 200 (or more) critics, scholars, translators, writers and ports are present. The ‘Festival of Letters’ event, which is 3 days long, was inaugurated by SL Bhyrappa, who is an eminent Kannada writer and a Sahitya Akademi fellow. The venue for the event was New Delhi’s Kamani auditorium.
As per the official statement released by the Akademi, the official theme for the festival this year was ‘Folklore and Oral Literature in India’.
As per K Sreenivasarao, the Secretary of the Akademi, "This year, the festival is starting on 21st February 2017, which is the international Mother Tongue Day and the Akademi is also organising a two-day National Seminar on 'Protecting Mother Tongues' , where a number of literary stalwarts will participate.''
The decorated festival is scheduled to be concluded on 26th February. As part of the festival, ‘Yuva Sahiti and Spin – A – Tale’ events would also be organized for the children. Multiple cultural performances would also take place as part of the festival in different parts of India.
The winners in the short story category are as follows
- Chhatrapal in Dogri
- Shyam Darihare in Maithili
- Moirangthem Rajen in Manipuri
- Asaram Lomate in Marathe
- Paramita Satpathy in Odia
- Bulaki Sharma in Rajasthani
- Vannadhasan in Tamil
The poets who won the award are:
- Jnan Pujari in Assamese
- Anjali Basumatary in Bodo
- Kamal Vora in Gujarati
- Prabha Verma in Malayalam
- Sitanath Acharya in Sanskrit
- Gobindra Chandra Maji in Santali
- Nand Javeri in Sindhi
- Papineni Sivasankar in Telugu
The novelists who won the award are:
- Jerry Pinto in English
- Nasira Sharma in Hindi
- B M Kunhi in Kannada
- Edwin J F Dsouza in Konkani
- Gita Upadhyay in Nepali